The result is that the most experienced reader often hesitates in his metre and is obliged to read lines over twice or even thrice, before he can satisfy himself how the poet meant his words to be accented and what exactly was the rhythm he intended. In fact, instead of smoothing the way for his reader, he often deliberately chooses to spare himself labour by taking every advantage, fair or unfair, of those licences of accent and syllable suppression for which the unstable condition of the literary language afforded scope. The reader of Gower’s verse is never interrupted in this manner except by the fault of a copyist or an editor; and when we come to examine the means by which the smoothness is attained, we feel that we have to do with a literary craftsman who by laborious training has acquired an almost perfect mastery over his tools. The qualities of which we are speaking are especially visible in the more formal style of utterance which belongs to the speeches, letters and epitaphs in our author’s tales. The reply of Constance to her questioner (ii. 1148 ff.) is a good example of the first: ‘Quod sche, “I am A womman wofully bestad. I hadde a lord, and thus he bad, That I forth with my litel Sone Upon the wawes scholden wone, Bot what the cause was, I not: Bot he which alle thinges wot Yit hath, I thonke him, of his miht Mi child and me so kept upriht, That we be save bothe tuo.”’ And as longer instances we may point to the reflexions of the Emperor Constantine near the end of the same book (ii. 3243 ff.), and the prayer of Cephalus (iv. 3197-3252). The letters of Canace and of Penelope are excellent, each in its own way, and the epitaphs of Iphis (iv. 3674 ff.) and of Thaise (viii. 1533 ff.) are both good examples of the simple yet finished style, e.g. ‘Hier lith, which slowh himself, Iphis, For love of Araxarathen: And in ensample of tho wommen, That soffren men to deie so, Hire forme a man mai sen also, Hou it is torned fleissh and bon Into the figure of a Ston: He was to neysshe and sche to hard. Be war forthi hierafterward; Ye men and wommen bothe tuo, Ensampleth you of that was tho.’ (iv. 3674 ff.)